By Funke Egbemode
Ola: Men are foolish, very foolish.
Lola: Ah ah, what’s biting you? How can you just wake up and make such a blasphemous declaration?
Ola: How did blasphemy come into this matter? You don’t even know what I’m talking about.
Lola: I’m itching to find out, trust me. You, a man declaring that men, all men are fools. I’m a woman and I will not even say such a thing. You can call men overgrown babies. They love breasts and are never weaned from them. They love to be petted and pampered but they are no fools. No, I totally disagree with you.
Ola: By the time I’m done, you will agree with me.
Lola: Okay, I can’t wait.
Ola: Okay, start by explaining this. NYSC pays all corps members the same salaries and allowances, right? But when they get to mammy market, the male corper dips his hands into his pockets and like a fool buys drinks and pepper-soup for the female corper. The female corper saves her money after having a good time.
Lola: So, the Bobo corper is a fool because of that? That is so totally unfair. He’s just being a man. You don’t expect the babe to pay for suya when her boo is able and capable?
Ola: So, the babe is disabled and incapable?
Lola: Nooo, it’s just the way of the world.
Ola: When the Bible said a fool is easily parted from his money, don’t you think it was Nigerian men that it was referring to?
Lola: Oh please, stop this nonsense. Don’t turn the Bible upside down.
Ola: Okay, explain that little scenario.
Lola: The explanation is simple. Men are wired to give. Women are wired to receive.
Ola: Eeeeeh? What did you say? Did you come up with that all by yourself or it’s a quote from somewhere?
Lola: You heard me right. Men give. Women take. It is the way we are wired. We are just wired differently.
Ola: Who did the wiring?
Lola: God now.
Ola: This kind of wiring is electrocuting men. I don’t like it.
Lola: No. It is only when a man is trying to rewire himself that sparks fly. There is only trouble in Paradise when men refuse to follow the lines of their divine wiring. Once a man is willing to give, we are willing, always ready to receive.
Ola: Like Ever Ready battery?
Lola: Yes o. Consider how babies are made. The man gives and the woman receives and a new life is born.
Ola: Aaah, when we give in that way, we give painfully. The poor man will shudder, shake and groan before delivering the goods.
Lola: Don’t even go there. What painful shudder? The whole movement is divinely blissful or blissfully divine. It is the screeching to a halt that is done in a way to prevent the man from crossing to the other side of cloud nine, you know. Come on, you know it is a pleasure made in heaven, part of the way a man is wired. You groan and moan and send your millions of little men to work. The woman receives them and is in trouble for nine months, spitting and vomiting. You guys get all the pleasure.
Ola: You are a woman, how would you know if it is painful or pleasurable?
Lola: Someone should take a picture of your face when you are shaking and shuddering on top or below a woman… In any case, if it is painful, how come you guys want it so much, so often, in every way and at all cost? A man would do anything to achieve that blissful shudder.
Ola: I don’t know what you are talking about.
Lola: Ah ah, suddenly you don’t know what I am talking about, right? Were you not the one who asked me to explain the logic behind ‘men are wired to give’? It is not that men are generous willingly. It is because that is the only way they know how to live. They even pay to give a woman pleasure.
Ola: Can you imagine? If it is not foolishness, why would a man pay to give a woman pleasure?
Lola: Sometimes they even queue to pay for that pleasure.
Ola: Like say dem swear for us?
Lola: They are just fulfilling destiny.
Ola: Chaaaai, there is God oooo. Who did this to us?
Lola: You should be grateful to us too because I hear that if a man carries his full load around for too long without downloading, he may fall ill.
Ola: True. It may even cause a dangerous ailment.
Lola: Or make him misbehave and start seeing double.
Ola: True. When a man is too loaded and can’t find a woman in need, it can be catastrophic.
Lola: You see my point now? God has blessed men so much they have to continue to be generous givers.
Ola: Thank God women are programmed to receive, otherwise there would be trouble. God is a perfect God. He had it all figured out. He gave men what to give and women the capacity to receive.
Ola: That last part is arguable. Some men have more capacity than their women can cope with.
Lola: You have a point but it is usually something that can be worked out. Sometimes the woman wants more than the man can give. They just need to work on it and find a middle road. Where I have problem with men is their propensity to open branch offices everywhere.
Ola: When a man has so much to give, he has to continue to distribute. If a business is big, it spreads so more people can benefit from it.
Lola: Isn’t that why some men die in active service when they become General Overdoer of the Sinners Chapel?
Ola: Those are the ones who don’t know when their pipeline has gone broke or empty. Wise men always know when to stop shopping and shuddering so the groan of pleasure does not become a groan of death.
Lola: So, you now see that women and men are created for different purposes? When a woman can’t receive, she cannot function like a full woman and when a man can’t give, he feels like half a man or no man at all.
Ola: That sounds a little complicated. Please expatiate.
Lola: If a woman is a breadwinner, picking all the bills and taking care of the man, she begins to lose her feminity. She becomes cranky. She is not so warm in bed. She begins to lose the tenderness and capacity to receive. Because she has started to give instead of receiving. Everybody starts blaming her for being rude, arrogant and bossy but a woman is not wired to give and receive. She is programmed to play only one role. She can only do her God-given duties. When circumstances force her to play a role written for a man, she starts acting deformed.
Ola: And a man forced to receive?
Lola: That is a man bent out of shape
*Egbemode ([email protected])
